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About Gold

Gold observed from the back of the line. He watched the others delve into their pasts, saw their reactions flickering across their faces, the twitches of muscle and subtle alterations of posture and weight that told one thing or another. This should hurt, he thought, impassive. Pretty much everyone here has a shitty past, and I'm watching them run smack into it like a man into a wood chipper. He was sure he remembered that feeling. A tension in the chest, a sense of awkwardness and a violation of privacy, that feeling that he should not bear witness to it. He was sure he remembered that feeling, when he was a boy named Andrew.
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He watched in silence, offering no comment, making no suggestion.
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After the new guy - if he was new, for all Gold knew he could have been around for years - finished checking his file and stepped away from the laptop, Gold gave him a nod and slid smoothly into the vacated chair. He did not take a deep breath, did not pause or hesitate. He just looked to the man with the thumb drives. "Toss mine over, will you?"
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He caught it without any difficulty, and without looking, then pushed it into the laptop and booted his file.
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Little in it surprised him. He had lived through these events, after all. But he did lean forward and rest his elbows on the table after a few moments, as he began to rack his brain for information.
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I don't remember killing this guy, he thought. Or her. They were just names at first. Not one or two, either, but almost half a dozen names that got added to the actions he remembered. It did come back, in drips and drabs. Step by step, word by word, he read up on his own operations like a man sitting outside himself, remarking at his own efficiency and capacity for violence. I really am fucked in the head, he thought. A second thought occurred, and he glanced up and across the room towards David. The man met his eyes. He'd been watching. You read all this and still freed me, didn't you?
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He ran his tongue along the outside of his teeth, considering. All revolutions need their butchers, he supposed.
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Gold spent most of his time hanging around in Lamia's house, in the few square feet around his couch. Elsewise he trained in the forest, and plied his hand at some old practical skills. It was easy to pick those up around Lamia, since she liked to hunt, skin, and cook just about anything that tasted like chicken. Which, he was assured, was just about everything. Except for chicken. He always thought chicken tasted funny, somehow. But then he always had it with sauces.
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Nonetheless, he watched the others. He listened. Occasionally he even talked to them, though that rarely went anywhere good. He was either too violent or too standoffish for most of these fellow mutants. And therein lay the thing. Many of them were innocents, people who wanted nothing to do with any of this but had to pick this or a collar. They were good people at heart, not ready for what the future would demand.
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He nodded to himself and turned back to the files. He felt confirmed in his prior theories now. Knowing that David was aware of his whole history and still freed him.
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The old news rolled by his eyes. Gold read the files over and over, his golden irises shining in the light of the laptop. He waited for his memory to jog, so he at least remembered them. They deserved that much. He had been a good killer. Humans and mutants alike, he did what the DEHA asked of him.
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It had been some years since he felt much of anything about anything. Vague happiness, not joy, vague disquiet, not sadness, vague concern, not fear. But he felt something as he closed the files down and popped the flash drive into his hand. Something solid.
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Guilt.
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He smashed the drive against the corner of the table with a quick flick of his hand, and tossed the pieces onto the floor. The memories were back in his head, and he would make sure to remember them, and remember the dead. He owed them that much.
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Gold rose and gestured at the laptop. "Anyone else need this?"

In the push and the press of bodies his instincts went into overdrive. He rolled from blows that had barely been thrown, countered attacks just contemplated, struck to kill on men a second after they thought to run. Blow after blow flashed out from him, and men fell like pebbles before an avalanche, screaming with horrendous injuries or gurgling out their final moments. He leapt and flipped and rolled, never letting anyone getting distance, daring the rapid responders to launch their grenades. But they never did. They let the slaughter go on, waiting for an opportunity he was never going to give them.
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As the soldiers thinned out, though, Gold's instinctual haze faded. Blood stained his face and the scent of it cloyed his nose. I must look like a regular human nightmare right now, he thought.
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Most importantly, his flak cloud was running thin. Pretty soon he was going to need cover unless Grav or Fahrenheit dealt with those Rapid Responders. But if one came down close, maybe he could cripple it again. Maybe. He didn't want to flip the coin if he could avoid it. He was part of a team now, sort of. People did different things on teams. One of the things he did was run from Rapid Responders, and take people like this apart.
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Gold jumped and kicked a soldier in the face. The man's neck snapped as the kinetic shock lanced through his vertebrae, breaking them just so. I gotta learn to be less effective against these guys.

"Oh, joy," he shouted, as he dropped his shoulder and dived into a forward roll into a continued charge. The electrical bolt crackled into the ground behind him, sparked a moment and dissipated. "Fucking, fucking joy!"
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He gave himself about five seconds before they started tossing around electro grenades and dancing the macarena on his smoking body. That really gave him only one good option: force them into causing collateral if they tried it. He'd learned that if they closed on him he could, if he put everything he had into the blow, make them bleed. He did not know if the one he'd broken had died, but he'd hurt the human enough to force him into retreat, and honestly, anything that meant he wasn't getting electrocuted like some sort of toy frankenstein was an improvement in his book.
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Gold charged down the soldiers, spinning his guns back into their holsters, before leaping up and letting his reptile brain take over.
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Oh me, oh my, Gold thought as he drew his pistols and idly flipped them in his grip. Though his emotions were often deadened, adrenaline touched him the same as anyone else. He felt twitchy. 'Working' with Fahrenheit would not meet professional guidelines in most forms of military career. But then, he'd never had a military career, so what the hell.
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He pushed up from his creeping crouch just after the Rapid Responder opened fire on Grav and, hoping she could keep its attention, he ran up and vaulted the circling wall, opening fire on the ground troops as he dropped.
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The building was structured somewhat like a hospital; in fact, as Gold recalled Grav’s words, there was a very good chance it had a nursery, at minimum. His golden eyes tracked back and forth over the building, noting the two Rapid Responders patrolling the grounds. There were probably more; there always were more of them. Gold’s eyes flicked to the roof, then narrowed when he saw the man walking the perimeter. He was a mutant; no human would walk on the very edge of the building. And though the kid—he was around eighteen or at least appeared to be around that age—was wearing casual jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt, he had a silver AMP collar around his neck.
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Gold kept low in the grass, watching from the angle of a snake but with the eyes of a hawk. He waited until he'd assessed and counted three complete circuits for all the visible guards, in case there might be others walking a weird patrol route, and slid back on his belly until the treeline hid him altogether.
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He jumped up, caught a branch and flipped up onto it. His feet found the right places to lay and spread his weight, his body adopted the perfect posture. The mind piloting his body played little part in the affair. It often seemed like he did not, but he had long ago grown used to that. Over time he'd come to view it a little like having a permanent autopilot, like an overprotective friend. Friends...
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There were none of those in his life. Not yet. The idea that he could tag a 'not yet' onto the statement raised conflict. A potent mixture of distaste and longing, neither grounded in anything solid.
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Gold sprinted along the branches, hopped from tree to tree, until he found the glowing woman of fire and the somewhat subtler figure of Grav. He crouched on a branch above them. Both could fly. They'd get to look down on him plenty later.
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"Scouted the place out. Counted at least two rapid responders and one mutant. Young, post-pubescent teenager and dressed like one, wearing a silver AMP collar. Don't know if the colour means anything. I have a bit of a history with these responder assholes. I'd appreciate it if you two could handle them and - hopefully - any others they have hiding in their colon. I should be able to handle the kid. He's on the roof, either to protect against incoming fliers or, I'd say more likely, he's got enhanced perceptions. If we're lucky the latter isn't the case, but I'm assuming we'll be spotted going in right now."
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He focused his attention on Fahrenheit, who shone and flickered, a beautiful image of all-consuming hunger.
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"Best I understand it, this is your op. Do we go in hard or do we try to be sneaky?" Har har har. I did a funny.

Gold looked around the forest. It was day here, too, but the atmosphere was all different. The soil felt firmer underfoot, the trees younger. That sense of age which was always there at the hideout was not present in this place. This felt like a place people went. If you go down to the woods today, you’re in for a big surprise, he sang inside his own head. If you go down to the woods today… how the fuck does that song go?
He had a lyric about finding three homicidal mutants, but it wasn’t coming together in his head.
To provide a bit of music of his own, he cocked his pistols one at a time and then returned them to their holsters.
He turned to the two women accompanying him, or who he was accompanying. One or the other. “We going? Woman made of fire isn’t the stealthiest thing in the world. Less time we’re standing still the less chance they’ll have of seeing us coming.”

Jack had found him hanging from a tree branch by his arms. He’d been there for two hours. He did not have the sort of mutant abilities which gave him superhuman strength or resiliency, something that he definitely felt the lack of with his new… allies. What he did have, though, was a cold dedication to physical perfection.
Gold just listened, still hanging from his branch, while Jack asked him to report to David. He dropped down afterwards. The words were not phrased as an order, but he nodded and loped off to Lamia’s home, and his stone couch.
His clothes and equipment were carefully arranged around that couch, in a precise circle two meters in diameter that he'd sketched with white chalk. That was the personal space he defined for himself, and not one item belonging to him ever trailed outside it.
Now he toweled off and rotated his shoulders to work out the kinks and aches, before pulling on his favourite T-shirt. It was a custom job, made by Mary at his request. It was white, with a bright yellow smiley face and the legend ‘World’s Friendliest Man’ scribed beneath in big, rainbow-friendly letters. He found it funny.
He headed right over to the briefing room where David, Fahrenheit and Grav were cloistered away, knocked and entered. David looked up, not sharply, but with that slight suddenness that betrayed surprise. Other than that he gave nothing away beyond the momentary drop of his smile. <em>Funny how often people stop smiling when they see me.
"Jack said to come here,” he said in his usual cool, toneless voice. He cast his eyes over the other two women. Fahrenheit’s fire caught in the gold of his irises, giving them a molten shine.
David got back on point fast. “Are you willing to come along with the ladies, Gold? And are you ladies willing to have him?”
Gold shrugged. He bit back on his instinctual retort. Stupid question. It still tried to get out. He worked his jaw. Finally he said, “Wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t. Jack didn't give me any details. I'd appreciate a catch-up on anything important.”

Grav’s address took him by surprise. He turned his glimmering eyes her way, unsmiling. Then he looked skyward, as if seeking answers up there. “You know, I’m not sure. If you asked me in the heat of the moment, hell yes. I was blabbering away to myself like some fool. But now we’re after the fact…” he made a circular gesture with one hand. “I can’t remember enjoying it. I usually don’t after killing. Not sure if it’s because I’m wired wrong upstairs or if I’m wired right. I figure a man ought to feel something after he’s taken a life. I don’t, though.” He frowned momentarily, then gave her a nod. “Thanks for asking, though. You’re a bit of an ass-kicker. Glad I’m on your side in this… uh…” he glanced back at the birdman, “political disagreement we’ve got going on with the entirety of the human race.”
Matt addressed him, then, a little late but that didn’t bother him much. He was still wondering about Grav’s question. Looking back on the memories of the fight, he could remember enjoying it… but the remembrance stirred nothing in his heart. Whatever emotion he felt at the time had gone, leaving emptiness in its wake, without even the faintest impression of an emotional footprint.
And then Matt went and asked him a question, too, another question he could not easily answer. That surprised him a little. Matt seemed busy. He expected an answer and to be blown off.
Gold blinked a few times. He sighed, and ran a hand through his hair. His face showed no expression as he watched Matt working on the girls. “I’ll assume you were being sarcastic. Because there’s many things I could use to describe your set up… but convenient is not one of them.”
Matt glanced back at him. He didn’t offer an answer. This was one of those ‘gauge the man’ moments. People did that to him sometimes. Not many liked what they found. He did say, “So why are you still here?”
Gold’s blank expression did not shift. All the signs of his emotional state lay in the sigh he’d made, the hand that played with a long glimmering gold strand of hair. “You’re asking me difficult questions with difficult answers.” He opened his mouth to speak, closed it, opened his mouth and closed it again. Then he shook his head. “I don’t got them. Just bear one thing in mind, no matter how little you think of me: I don’t like killing. It’s what I do. Like... instinct.”
He walked away to let Matt work. It didn’t sound like they would kick him out, as such. But if it came down to an ultimatum that involved buying into their bullshit, he’d leave. They could ask a lot of him. His skills, his powers, his blood, even his life… but they couldn’t ask him to buy into their politics.
It bothered him, in truth. Their little brotherhood-y rants possessed a certain appeal. Hadn’t he wanted comfort, someone to call a friend or a lover? He had. Gold remembered wanting those things. Comrades, at least, were a step in the right direction.
But there was something in him, a barricade in front of his emotions, that resisted interrogation or examination, which kept him aloof and immune to the press of reason. He could not hate the men who imprisoned him. He knew he could not because he wanted to hate them, but years of effort could not spark that fire. The closest he’d ever come to hatred was for the specific men who put him in DEHA hands. But even that – and his desire for one on one battle with them – was not motivated by hate.
Matt probably did not know how hard a question he had posed. None of them did, though he figured that would be a prominent part of his DEHA file. Their shapeshifter maybe knew.
So why are you still here…
Gold’s eyes narrowed as he concentrated, seeking inside himself an emotion, an answer, something which pointed in some direction that would let him provide what they wanted to know.
But nothing came. Nothing ever did. There was just the emotional void within him that swallowed everything cast into it, and offered nothing but numbness and silence.

Oh no, I have been called a thug and a bully and a murderer, whatever will I do? Not care would be the starting point. It was all true, for one, and he didn’t hide from the truth. He would protest bully. Bullies tended to enjoy what they did and he took no or very little pleasure from what he did. As he understood it, though, a thug was hired muscle. He fitted that definition quite comfortably. David had a need for thugs and murderers though. Otherwise Gold would not be here.
“Yep,” he said softly, without inflection or emotion, “I’m a murderer.”
He dismissed the birdman. He looked scary, would be good when the blood started flying no doubt. Beyond that he seemed like any other pompous windbag. Which admittedly he wouldn’t have expected to look at him.
Ain’t life just full of surprises?
Gold sat up. He still felt a bit out of it, but not enough to bother the healer. A good roasting might help sharpen him up for next time. Those armored soldiers were a damn menace.
He rose and approached Matt, observing the other new faces without comment. “Hey, Matt. Is this Tibet?” Gold received a nod as an answer. “Huh. What’s the plan here? Are we just going to hop around the world hitting prisons?”
“Thought you didn’t have an agenda, Gold?” Matt didn’t smile, but there was a playful sort of look in his eye, and maybe a little resentment.
Murderers get no damn respect these days. “What’s yours is mine. Can’t blame me for wanting to know, right?”

Once he’d emerged from the portal, Gold had found a nice bank of snow to flop down on and remained there while everyone else argued or postured. He wasn’t interested in either.
His muscles still ached from the electro-grenade. His prison uniform, tattered before, was in ruins now, and blackened to boot. New clothes were in the offing. Mary might be able to help with that.
When Matt acknowledged him he gave a simple nod, just to let the man know he was listening.
He watched Fahrenheit argue and threaten. For once his head did not show him images of her death. Might well have been that he couldn’t hurt her when she was made of fire. Difficult to punch that.
The big guy, though, weird as he looked, offered so many bits and pieces and things to break and snap that watching him was like looking through a kaleidoscope. His back-brain – or whatever it was that processed the futures – bled into his normal vision with enthusiasm.
Gold yawned and lay back in the snow, enjoying the cold. He did shiver, and hoped they would go home soon, but he liked the change in temperature. His hair spread around him, detailing the flawless white with serpentine veins of shimmering gold.
“I hate to contradict,” he called out after the birdman’s speech to Fahrenheit, “but as far as I’m concerned she’s welcome, vendetta or no. I don’t know who you are, or who you think you are, but don’t ever speak for me. I don’t give a shit what they’re doing to my brethren. I don’t have ‘brethren’. I’m not a political dissident, and I’ve got no agenda.” He laid his head down again. “So. Don’t speak for me. In fact, don’t speak for anyone around here. How’s that old saying go? When you assume, you make an ass of ‘u’ and ‘me’?”

The soldier fumbled for his pistol, but his hand slipped. He jerked the gun up just as Gold closed his hand on the man’s throat and careened into him. His hip clashed on the man’s seat and the two of them tumbled against the wall with Gold on top and their limbs tangled up.
Gold scrambled, keeping his grip and position, pinning the man down with his weight. He squeezed. The soldier choked and gurgled, trying to get free, trying anything. Gold jerked his hand up, felt something click under the skin. He jerked back down, and the soldier went limp.
He rubbed his hip. “Excuse me, I’d like to drive,” he said, then groaned and rubbed his hip. “Son of a bitch. I’m gonna be black and blue tomorrow.” He slid smoothly off his prey and shifted into the gunnery seat.
Bright lights, levers, gauges and readouts assaulted his eyes. Gold licked his lips, trying to work out what meant what. A wheel and stick arrangement suggested driving apparatus which he ignored. A periscope, big red button and something not unlike a joystick made him think guns.
He looked through the scope, pulled and pushed on things. The tank growled like a sleeping bear being poked with a stick. His view shifted in the periscope. Gold soon worked out how to turn the turret. That just left shooting, and that big red button would either be the firing button, or a self-destruct mechanism.
“Give Andrew Martin a gun and satisfaction,” he said, sighting on one of the armoured troopers, “is guaranteed.” A grin stretched across his face. “Bang.”
He pushed the button.